Tag: health care

Baby Given World-First CRISPR Gene-Editing Treatment

In a global first, doctors in Philadelphia have used personalized CRISPR gene-editing to treat a baby with a life-threatening genetic disorder—marking a major milestone in the future of individualized medicine.

The patient is KJ Muldoon, a 9-month-old boy diagnosed shortly after birth with CPS1 deficiency, a rare and often fatal genetic condition that disrupts the body’s ability to eliminate toxic metabolic waste. “You Google ‘CPS1 deficiency,’ and it’s either fatality rate or liver transplant,” said his mother, Nicole Muldoon, in a video released by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where KJ received his treatment.

Instead of undergoing a liver transplant, KJ became the first person in the world to be treated with a version of CRISPR designed specifically for him. The therapy, developed by CHOP and Penn Medicine, used gene-editing technology to directly target and repair his unique genetic mutation—something that had never been done before.

“Our child is sick,” said his father, Kyle Muldoon. “We either have to get a liver transplant or give him this medicine that’s never been given to anybody before, right?”

The treatment consisted of three infusions delivered to KJ’s liver, where the CRISPR system—essentially a set of molecular scissors—sought out and edited the faulty gene. “The drug is really designed only for KJ,” said Dr. Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, director of CHOP’s Gene Therapy for Inherited Metabolic Disorders program. “The genetic variants that he has are specific to him. It’s personalized medicine.”

According to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, KJ has responded well to the therapy. He’s now able to eat a higher-protein diet—something that was previously dangerous due to his condition—and he requires fewer medications. He’ll still need long-term monitoring, but doctors say early results are promising.

“While KJ will need to be monitored carefully for the rest of his life, our initial findings are quite encouraging,” Ahrens-Nicklas said in a statement. “We hope he is the first of many to benefit from a methodology that can be scaled to fit an individual patient’s needs.”

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Family says woman declared brain dead but her pregnancy continues under state law

The family of a 30-year-old metro Atlanta mother and nurse said she was declared brain dead more than 90 days ago — but is still being kept alive because she’s pregnant.

Adriana Smith, a registered nurse at Emory University Hospital, was nearly nine weeks pregnant in early February when she started experiencing intense headaches. According to her mother, April Newkirk, Smith sought treatment at Northside Hospital but was released after being given medication.

“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Newkirk said. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”

The next morning, Newkirk said Smith’s boyfriend woke to her gasping for air in her sleep—gargling sounds he believes were caused by internal bleeding. 

He called 911. Smith was taken to Emory Decatur and later transferred to Emory University Hospital where she worked. A CT scan revealed multiple blood clots in her brain.

“They asked me if I would agree to a procedure to relieve the pressure, and I said yes,” Newkirk said. “Then they called me back and said they couldn’t do it.”

Smith was declared brain dead. Her family has been by her side every day since, including her young son, who they said still believes his mother is just sleeping.

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HHS chief RFK Jr. says Americans should not take his medical advice 

Take two of whatever you like and don’t call him in the morning.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top public health official, argued Wednesday that Americans shouldn’t be taking medical cues from him. 

The Health and Human Services secretary made the stunning statement during a House Appropriations Committee hearing, after Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) asked, “If you had a child, would you vaccinate that child for measles?”

Kennedy Jr., who has previously expressed regret that he vaccinated his children, was hesitant to respond. 

“For measles? Um … probably for measles,” the HHS chief reluctantly answered, before claiming that his opinions about vaccines are “irrelevant.”

“I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive,” RFK Jr., continued, as he tried to side-step the question, “but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice, from me.” 

Pocan noted that he wasn’t asking the former environmental lawyer – who has no medical training – to dispense medical advice. 

“For me to answer that question directly, it will seem like I’m giving advice to other people, and I don’t want to be doing that,” the “Make America Healthy Again” proponent argued. 

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Gavin Newsom Scales Back Plan to Provide Illegal Aliens With Free Healthcare as California’s Financial Crisis Deepens

California Governor Gavin Newsom is scaling back his ludicrous pledge to offer free healthcare to all illegal aliens in the state.

His 2025–26 budget proposal, released Wednesday, includes a freeze on new Medi-Cal enrollments for adults without legal immigration status and imposes a $100 monthly premium for those already enrolled.

The freeze would begin in 2026, affecting new applicants over the age of 19.

According to Newsom’s office, the change will not impact those currently enrolled or those receiving limited emergency or maternity coverage.

The new premium would apply starting in 2027 to all adults with what the administration calls “unsatisfactory immigration status,” a term that includes both illegal aliens and certain legal residents ineligible for federal Medicaid.

Newsom’s office says the revised policy is necessary due to a $16 billion shortfall in state revenue, driven in part by ballooning Medi-Cal costs linked to his earlier expansions.

Rather than his own failings and the mismanagement of Democratic authorities, Newsom cited Trump’s decision to impose tariffs as justification for the shortfall.

“California is under assault,” Newsom said. “The United States of America, in many respects, is under assault because we have a president that’s been reckless in terms of assaulting growth engines.”

However, Newsom insisted that he was not cancelling the program altogether.

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Congress advances $3.5 billion cut for CA for covering illegal immigrant health care

A new Congressional budget proposal would cut federal payments to California by $3.5 billion for allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in the state’s taxpayer-funded health care program.

California largely does not get federal reimbursements for illegal immigrant health care, though it is reimbursed for emergency care under a federal law requiring hospitals receiving federal funding to treat anyone in need of emergency medical attention.

The budget proposal would cut the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage to states that “use their Medicaid infrastructure to provide health care coverage for illegal immigrants under Medicaid or another state-based program.” The cuts would not impact emergency care reimbursements.

California has spent $9.5 billion this year on illegal immigrant health care and is reportedly set to face a $10 billion budget deficit the coming fiscal year.

According to an analysis Monday morning from California Policy Center Visiting Fellow Marc Joffe, cutting the federal reimbursement share from 90% to 80% would reduce California’s federal funding by $3.5 billion.

While the federal government does not reimburse the state for non-emergency care for illegal immigrants, other federal health care reimbursements enhance the state’s available resources for fully state-funded health care programs, such as coverage for illegal immigrants.

Joffee also noted the $3.5 billion cut equates to roughly the cost of coverage of five million beneficiaries at $7,000 per year.

In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested a $6.4 billion emergency bailout for Medi-Cal. He said that while benefits for illegal immigrants had a “partial” impact, ending benefits for such individuals was not on his “docket” and that he believes in “universal healthcare.”

With an estimated 1.9 million illegal immigrants and $9.5 billion spent by Medi-Cal on their health care, the state is spending approximately $5,000 per illegal immigrant on health care this year.

Working illegal immigrants in California earn a median wage of $13 per hour — well below the state’s $18 per hour minimum wage — and thus pay up to $1,846 per year in state taxes, assuming all income is property reported and taxed, and all non-rent, post-tax funds are spent at businesses collecting sales tax.

That’s well short of the average of $5,000 spent on each illegal immigrant’s health care — not including other state programs — leaving the program highly reliant on other state revenue, including indirectly via federal funding, for support.

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CT Scans May Account for 5 Percent of US Cancers—Doctors Say the Story Is More Complex

CT scans are essential to modern medicine, quickly diagnosing conditions from strokes to cancer. However, new research suggests that the very tool used to save lives could, in some cases, contribute to future cancer cases.

A University of California–San Francisco study estimates that CT scans performed in 2023 could lead to more than 100,000 future cancer cases—about 5 percent of annual U.S. diagnoses. That level of risk is comparable with other known factors such as alcohol and obesity.

Published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study concludes that while CT scans remain essential, they should be used more cautiously, especially for children and patients who undergo repeated imaging.

“CT can save lives, but its potential harms are often overlooked,” Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, lead author of the study and UC–San Francisco radiologist, said in a statement. “Reducing the number of scans and reducing doses per scan would save lives.”

Some experts worry that the message lacks balance and may scare patients from necessary care by emphasizing long-term cancer risks without proper context.

“It is frightening to see these numbers,” Dr. Donald Frush, pediatric radiologist at Duke University, told The Epoch Times. “But without putting them in the context of how valuable CT can be, we risk eroding public trust in a tool that saves lives every day.”

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Ontario Chief Coroner reports raise concerns that MAID policy and practice focus on access rather than protection

The Chief Coroner for Ontario recently released two new reports of its interdisciplinary MAID Death Review Committee: on Same or Next Day Provision of MAID and on Waiver of Final Consent.

The MAID Death Review Committee — of which I am a member — reviews cases of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) that are selected by the coroner’s MAID team for the common issues they raise. The review helps inform policy recommendations.

Committee reports contain case summaries and summaries of committee discussions, and the Chief Coroner’s recommendations. The newly released reports appear to confirm what is argued in several chapters in our recently co-edited volume, Unravelling MAiD in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care, and in other publications: Canada’s MAID law, policy and practice focuses excessively on promoting access to death, not on protection.

Some of the cases suggest a troubling prioritizing of ending patients’ lives with MAID rather than a precautionary approach. In my opinion, they reveal an urgent need for more rigorous legal and professional standards. Committee members’ starkly contrasting views on the ethics of some of the practices, which can be gleaned from the anonymous summaries of the committee’s discussions, are striking.

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Human ‘bodyoids’: We will soon be able to manufacture brain-less human bodies to generate replacement organs

Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? … [In] large part from a common root cause: a severe shortage of ethically sourced human bodies.

[We are forced] to rely heavily on animals in medical research, a practice that can’t replicate major aspects of human physiology and makes it necessary to inflict harm on sentient creatures. In addition, the safety and efficacy of any experimental drug must still be confirmed in clinical trials on living human bodies. These costly trials risk harm to patients, can take a decade or longer to complete, and make it through to approval less than 15% of the time.

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The Perfidy of 60 Minutes

It is a truism, a trope, a meme, common knowledge, a cliché, as obvious as a nose on a face, an actual fact and something so apparent that it is impossible in any way, shape, or form to deny unless utterly delusional.

But, somehow, time and time again, the major media players defy actual reality and try and try to substitute their own absurd version and – even more incredibly, like a lunatic accusing the clouds in the sky of conspiring against him – demand everyone within earshot to believe that it is true.

Typically, pointing out media propaganda is the same as pointing out that air exists – it is an atmosphere that we all must breathe and is typically specifically unremarkable due to its omnipresence.

But sometimes, when it is so egregious, so absurd, so literally dangerous, it must be challenged.

Which brings us to Sunday’s episode of the once-vaunted, now vile 60 Minutes.

The show that once intentionally made bad actors deeply uncomfortable by asking difficult questions is a shadow of its former self, with its story on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a perfect example of the depths to which it has fallen.

The NIH has a new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Even before he officially took over a few weeks ago, the Trump administration had already announced a few changes: dropping 1,200 probationary employees, putting new purchasing standards in place, and cutting the amount of “overhead” its research and academic “partners” can charge to conduct studies.

This, of course, led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth – not of course from the public, but from the staff, current, past, and future. 

Breaking down the segment into its constituent parts, one finds three main points.

First, a grad student is worried she may not get a job because of the looming budget cuts.

Second, a woman in an Alzheimer’s research study worries she will be negatively impacted by the cuts.

These two bits are rather silly but very heartstring tuggy. In the case of the grad student, she’s complaining about what may or may not be, as if she were entitled to a position somewhere.

In the case of the Alzheimer’s patient, it is rather telling – and may even be terrifyingly true – that she is worried that the study she is part of may face an overhead cut.

As the show notes – moments after her worried statement – the NIH has cut the amount it pays for overhead – administrators, paper clips, etc. – to institutions from an overhead of about 28% to 15%.

Note – the cut is not for the research project itself, but just to the administrative overhead. Second note – the much-vaunted Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (like almost every other funder of medical research) has always capped its overhead costs at 15%.

So, ironically, what the patient is – even if she does not know it – really worried about is whether or not the folks that run the study (being done by Duke University and UNC jointly) could actually prioritize paying administrators over caring for patients.

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RFK Jr: “Pediatricians who vaccinate 80-85% of the kids in their office, get these GIANT bonuses!”

This is perhaps the most important — and most dangerous — article I have ever posted.

But I have to print the truth wherever I find it.

Let’s start with this clip from RFK Jr. explaining how pediatricians are given an incentive to vaccine your children with ALL the vaccines produced by Big Pharma…

So to summarize what he just said, he claims that pediatricians are given a monetary payout — a BONUS — if they vaccinate a high rate of children in their clinic.

He claims it can be as high as $400/child….

But ONLY IF they maintain high levels of vaccination overall at the clinic.

Which is why they freak out on you if you refuse to get the vaccines or don’t want to follow the CDC schedule.

It’s not hard to imagine in this scenario where they start to see each little kid with a dollar sign over their heads instead of a patient!

RFK Jr. explains how the business model is to increase traffic into the clinic.

Unlike when we were kids, and you only went to the doctor if you got hurt, now you go all the time!

Why?

“BUSINESS MODEL”.

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